Abstract
Are complex temporal learned behaviors in children older than 7 the outcome of a continuous evolution from early conditioned responses to time, or do they result from radical changes in cognitive processes? Several experiments were run on children aged 3 to 6 to approach this question. Empirical data obtained in 3-year-olds suggest that early forms of knowledge about duration arise from practice in performing actions of varied durations in the presence of external clocks. Findings also suggest that as early as age 4 children enter a stage in which they are able to represent the duration between two events. But 4- to 5-year-olds still learn to regulate action in time more easily when they must deal with filled intervals rather than empty ones or when they are given the temporal rule to space responses in time. Furthermore, results show that between 4 to 6 two temporal learning modes, a conditioned-like mode and a controlled mode, coexist. It cannot be postulated that the latter derives directly from the former.
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© 1992 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Droit, S., Pouthas, V. (1992). Changes in Temporal Regulation of Behavior in Young Children : From Action to Representation. In: Macar, F., Pouthas, V., Friedman, W.J. (eds) Time, Action and Cognition. NATO ASI Series, vol 66. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3536-0_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3536-0_5
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